Today's Opinions

THUMBS UP! ADDED SECURITY. The city of Las Vegas is closing a deal with Game and Fish to buy water to help get it through the current drought. The city’s getting about 125 acre feet of water for about $25,000 — adding 11 days to the 72 days worth of storage the city already has.

Although the solid waste consumers were proven by audit to be overcharged for solid waste service, there is no intention by the city to reimburse the customers’ money. This action speaks directly to the ethics of the people making and approving this decision. Simply, the city manager thinks he can do whatever he wants, regardless of right or wrong.

As FFA supporters and alumni, we are privileged to know many of the Robertson High School FFA members personally. So we were shocked and saddened by the treatment they received at a recent school board meeting. We can only imagine how the students felt, especially when they work so hard to do their best at school and in their FFA program.

The young people in FFA strive to live by a code of ethics we should all try to live by. They are honorable, hardworking, and strive for excellence in everything they do. They are the future leaders of our community, state and nation.

Thank you to the Bank of Las Vegas and Community First Bank for their beautiful landscape improvements on Douglas Avenue. Paying the full cost of the improvements, the banks have illustrated their faith in the community, their creativity and ability to work together for the betterment of the entire city.

This project will bolster the business corridor on Douglas by bringing a pleasant atmosphere to that portion of our town. Hopefully, their example will inspire others in the community to add beautification projects in the historic district as well as elsewhere in the city.

When introducing the most recent articles in this column, we noted that between annexation in 1846 and the arrival of the railroad in 1879, there were three transformative developments in Las Vegas. We have related two of them, the Americanization of the Old Town Plaza and the emergence of the Romero dynasty.

The first and most powerful step in dismantling someone’s culture is by erasing their language. In the not-so-distant past, young Native Americans of El Norte were sent to “Indian Schools” for assimilation. They were forbidden to speak their native tongue.

The Denver Post on the bin Laden photos (May 6) — There was little to gain and a lot to lose had the Obama administration decided to release photographs of the bullet-scarred body of Osama bin Laden. We think the president made the right call in withholding them.

In this age of the Internet and WikiLeaks, there are no assurances that the photos will stay under wraps forever. However, a public release of the photos would be out of step with the objective of the mission the U.S. carried out in hunting down the man so closely connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.